NOĒSIS

1.) The article talks about the concept (and practice) of owning shares of an individual! The investors invest in an individual and hope to make returns which form a percentage of the individual’s future income. Uncomfortable situations may be that your investors will vote to decide if you want to have a moustache or if you should commit suicide!

Article: Human Marketplace

2.) Interesting perspective on Amazon’s business model and the story behind the profit-less growth.

Article: Amazon

3.) Why Twitter? A few good points on what twitter has been able to achieve through the medium it provides. It cuts distance and democratizes information/interaction.

Article: Twitter

4.) A short but interesting article on the Psychology of Online Comments. How annonymous comments impact discussions. Annonymous comments may not always be bad. How voting up comments impact behaviour of those making comments.

Article: Online Comments

Some interesting facts from the article:

• 25% of the online remarks/comments made are annonymous.
• As the age of a user decreases, chances of making an annonymous online remark increases. 40% of people in the eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-old demographic have posted anonymously.
• Reason behind bad behaviour with the crowd – “diffusion of responsibility” i.e. feeling less accountable for your own actions, and becoming more likely to engage in amoral behaviour.

5.) Two interesting articles on Artificial Intelligence. While one (New York Times) argues that we have come a long way with self driving cars, Siri (Apple), etc. The other argues that things like Siri is NOT artificial intelligence because artificial intelligence is about replicating the process of human thinking which these do not!

Article 1: The real meaning of AI

Article 2: The rapid advance of AI

Also found the expanded version of CAPTCHA: “Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart”

6.) Story behind CAPTCHA. How a brilliant idea converts printed books into digitised books by using people on the internet at no cost! As an aside, Luis von Ahn, the inventor, has also created Duolingo which I love! Do check if you want to learn new languages!

Article: Crowd-sourcing digitisation